


The L Word

by nomifucker69



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Swag, eren is a graphic designer, levi cleans windows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-11
Updated: 2015-04-11
Packaged: 2018-03-22 08:51:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3722800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nomifucker69/pseuds/nomifucker69
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Levi cleans the windows on Eren's building, and they communicate through the glass.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The L Word

**Author's Note:**

> modern au levi would totally clean windows tho he loves heights and cleaning things  
> and artsy eren bc it makes me erect

The earth had never really suited Levi.

The city was nothing but an overcrowded cesspit. The trash that left barely a centimetre of concrete uncovered made his skin itch, and he considered it a good day every time he made it through a crowd without trying to beat the shit out of someone. The ground trapped him, clawed at his skin, pulled him down. It suffocated him.

But it was different up here.

Here, he rose above the honking of car horns and the dank city smog. Here, it was silent, and if anything was disordered, he could easily fix it. He wiped the grime of the world from the building, and he loved it. Who knew that window cleaning, shitty manual labour that only a high-school dropout like himself would do because it was the only work he could get, would be his salvation?

Levi finally got his harness properly attached to the rickety wooden platform he stood on, and set to work cleaning, scrubbing at a patch of dirt with a cloth. This was it. The work of Gods, the work of freedom, the work of-

As the grime disappeared, he noticed a blur of motion through the clear patch of window.

_And then there’s this asshole._

As he cleaned more of the window, more of the idiot became apparent. Dark hair, typical office sheep attire, the most incredible green eyes ( _stop that_ ), and practically climbing on top of his desk to wave at Levi, here was Eren, the little shit that had been bothering him since the day he started work on this building.

The first thing he’d ever seen of him were those eyes, popping up right in front of his face. He’d almost fallen off the platform, and Eren had the gall to laugh. Next, he slapped a notepad to the window. It’d taken him a few tries to understand his spidery handwriting, but eventually he made out the words “Hi gorgeous!”

At that, Levi had scowled, breathed on the window, and written “Fuck you.” Instead of leaving like Levi had wanted him to, Eren had laughed, flipped to a new page in the notebook, scribbled briefly, and held it up. “You got the F backwards.”

Levi checked. He had. Rather than attempt to write something new and risk another failure, Levi had simply raised his middle finger. Again, instead of walking away in an offended huff, he wrote a new message. “I’m Eren. You got kik?”

Levi’s response was simply to move the platform down to the next floor.

Since then, he and Eren had continued to communicate in this way- Scribbled come-ons from Eren, and insults and hand gestures from Levi, only occasionally broken by Eren’s boss coming around and forcing Eren to actually work. He’d learned since that Eren’s last name was Jaeger, he was 22, he was a graphic designer, he liked dogs more than cats, and his favourite food was, according to an especially scribbly note that he’d shown to Levi with a hint of a blush on his cheeks, dick. Levi’s dick, specifically. He was undeterred by Levi’s argument that that was impossible considering he had never even seen his dick. In return, he’d somehow wormed Levi’s entire life story out of him, a feat it had taken even his best friends years to achieve. Levi told himself that it was like how people were always more willing to admit things online than in real life- anonymity and dissociation from real life makes it easier to say things, you’ll never talk to him outside of this, the feeling in your chest means nothing and is probably just altitude sickness.

Levi finished cleaning the patch of window that he'd determined as an appropriate size, and returned Eren’s customary energetic greeting with his own- A death glare and his middle finger. Eren grinned and blew him a kiss, and Levi dropped his cleaning cloth and raised a second middle finger. Checking to see if his boss was around and finding the coast clear, Eren picked his way through cubicles and the amused co-workers that watched their daily interactions and lifted the notebook, a message already scrawled on it.

“Hey there, hot stuff!”

With his middle finger, Levi wrote in the grime on the window, grimacing at having to touch dirt.

“You’re a piece of shit.”

Eren stuck out his tongue at him, and Levi tried not to think too hard about his obscenely perfect mouth. “Yeah, but you love it” said the next message, and Levi rolled his eyes.

“What makes you think that?” he wrote.

The next message took longer.

“It’s just the way you are. You’re hard on the outside (the note was broken here by a fairly accurate drawing of the ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) face), but you’re a marshmallow on the inside.”

“Really?”

“The R’s the wrong way round.”

So it was, Levi noticed, and harshly attacked the scrawled-on dirt with his cloth. He’d like to see Eren try to write backwards and get everything right. Asshole. When he was done cleaning the patch, Eren had a new message for him. “Sometimes when you’re cleaning, you get this little smile on your face. Like this.” There was a little drawing of Levi, pressed against the window, looking disgustingly happy. Underneath his embarrassment at having been seen with his walls down, he couldn’t help but be pleased that Eren thought of him like that- kind-hearted and happy.

In response, he quickly scribbled a stick man with a ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) face, pointed to it, and mouthed “You.” Eren blushed, going for his notebook, and stopped suddenly as a large figure loomed behind him.

_Oh, shit._

Eren’s boss yelled so loud that Levi could hear it through the glass. Hell, it was a wonder that the glass didn’t break from the force of his anger. Chastised, Eren slunk back behind his computer, glaring at his snickering co-workers. Their snickers were cut short as one by one, they glanced out and saw Levi watching them, hands clenched into fists. _No one makes fun of Eren but me_ , he hoped to convey with his look, and the message seemed to get across.

The perverts that watched him and Eren dealt with, Levi turned his attention back to the aforementioned little bastard. Levi watched Eren work just as much as Eren apparently watched him work- Probably even more so. He always started trying painfully obvious to look cool in front of Levi, hunching over his keyboard, eyebrows drawn so close together that he looked like he was sporting a monobrow and typing with such intensity that Levi expected to see him mouth the phrase “I’m in.” But as he worked, his features relaxed as he got more and more absorbed in what he was doing. Eren’s face of concentration was beautiful- Those eyes moved constantly, flipping over whatever he was doing, bottom lip caught between his teeth as his lovely hands flew across keys. Levi could really watch him for hours.

But he had a job to do as well. Sighing, he pulled away from where he’d been leaning on the window (there was a breath mark fogging up the glass now, how disgusting), dunked his cloth in his bucket of water, and scrubbed at the filth on the window. Even when he wasn’t watching Eren, His mind was consumed with him. Why was that? Eren was a shitty brat. He distracted Levi from his work, he was disgustingly overt with his attempts to get in Levi’s pants, he left grimy marks from his hands and breath all over the inside of Levi’s nice, clean windows-

And Levi was completely and utterly captivated by him.

Fuck.

He voiced that thought out loud when Eren appeared in front of him again.

Once Eren was done laughing at Levi’s shock, he held the notepad up to the window again.

“It’s Friday.”

Levi’s eyes widened in horror, and he hastily scribbled in the last patch of dirt left.

“Don’t you fucking start singing, I swear to God.”

Eren laughed with a hand pressed to his mouth, and Levi grinned back until he caught himself and pulled his face back into a practiced glare. Eren flipped to a new page.

“I won’t be able to talk to you all weekend.”

Levi raised an eyebrow. New page.

“Can I get your number?”

Levi studied the page, turning it over in his mind. It wasn’t a new request. Eren was probably joking. It was risky to give your number out to strangers. You could end up in a body bag. Or with your heart broken.

_Eren’s laugh. Eren’s smile. Eren’s eyes, his face when he’s working hard, his stupid-ass suits, his crazy handwriting, his eyebrows when he’s grumpy, his hands. Eren._

Eren looked a little upset now, but he tried his best to hide it, and failed. Levi mentally kicked himself for making him feel that way. New page.

“Can I at least get your name?”

Levi dunked his cloth in the bucket for a final time, and scrubbed the last of the dirt off the window. He breathed on the glass, and left a message with a hand that shook a little.

“I’m Levi.”

Underneath that, 10 digits.

He couldn’t hear them, but as he pressed the button to move his platform to the next floor, he saw Eren’s co-workers cheering. Eren himself did not cheer. Instead, he scribbled rapidly in the book again and flung it onto the window, just in time for Levi to read what it said before he descended completely.

“You wrote the L backwards.”

**Author's Note:**

> the joke is that levi sucks and would 100% fuck a window if it was possible  
> this was written in the middle of the night and its only betas are me and spellcheck so if anything's fucked you know why.  
> inb4 any of you yell at me about how many numbers there are in a phone number: theres 10 in australia so go away  
> dedicated to tumblr user taomi. may she rest in piss.  
> im exactly as disappointed as you are that the l word wasn't lesbians. maybe next time.


End file.
